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Selected Cases and Summaries of Completed Investigations - April to September 2000
Volume 3 - 3rd REPORT - SESSION 2000-2001
Chapter 2
DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT, TRANSPORT AND THE REGIONS
Case No: C.897/00
Delay in deciding an application for consent to demolish a listed building
Mr T's company applied for consent to demolish a listed building which they owned. A public inquiry was held on 13 and 14 October 1998 and on 30 November the planning inspector recommended that consent be granted. His report raised issues which required the Department to consult the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, seek legal advice and invite further evidence from the parties to the inquiry. The Department took until the end of 1999 to complete those steps. The Ombudsman found that on several occasions processes which might reasonably have been expected to take weeks had instead taken months and if matters had been handled as promptly as they should have been, determination of the application might have been advanced by some seven months. During that time Mr T's company had been obliged to bear the costs of securing the building. The Permanent Secretary of the Department apologised for the delay and agreed in principle to make Mr T a payment in respect of the costs of securing the building during the period of the delay.
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Case No: C.1613/00
Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency: inadequate advice
The Ombudsman found that the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) caused confusion by failing to properly explain to Mr A that they could no longer issue him with a British driving licence because he lived in Spain. That failure resulted in Mr A obtaining a medical report in support of his application for a driving licence (although DVLA had not asked for it) and DVLA seeking an opinion from medical advisors on that report. DVLA cashed Mr A's application payment and wrote to him compounding the impression that the application for a British driving licence was being processed. DVLA went on to fail to answer correspondence from Mr A. DVLA accepted that the service that Mr A received was poor. They apologised and agreed to pay the £45 Mr A sought as recompense for postage, telephone and transport costs.
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Case No: C.1739/00
Driving Standards Agency: mishandling of a complaint about rudeness by test centre staff
Mr R, a driving instructor, complained that the Driving Standards Agency had failed to investigate properly a complaint that staff at his local driving test centre had been rude to him and had behaved in an unprofessional manner. The Ombudsman found that the Agency had made considerable efforts to resolve Mr R's complaint, in the course of which they had offered him a number of apologies. However, deficiencies in communication on the Agency's part, in particular a decision not to acknowledge explicitly a recognised element of culpability, had rendered those efforts less effective than they should have been. The Agency reminded their managers about the correct way to handle such complaints; apologised to Mr R for the shortcomings in their handling of his complaint; and agreed to make him an ex gratia payment of £50 in recognition of those shortcomings.
Back to top Case No: C.1029/00
Vehicle Inspectorate: advice concerning an appeal against failure of a MOT test and recovery of the test fee
The Ombudsman did not uphold a complaint from Mr K that the Vehicle Inspectorate had misled him into taking legal action to recover a MOT test fee. The Ombudsman did not find that the letters that the Vehicle Inspectorate's operations manager had sent to Mr K's wife and to the garage which had failed her vehicle at MOT were contradictory. Rather, the Ombudsman found that the operations manager had written to those two different parties for different reasons. The Ombudsman criticised use of a misjudged phrase in the letter to Mrs K, but did not consider that that had led directly to the difficulties that Mr and Mrs K had encountered with a county court case they had pursued against the garage or costs and losses that they had incurred as a result. Nevertheless, the Vehicle Inspectorate's Chief Executive agreed to issue guidance to his staff to ensure they did not use such phrases in future.
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